FG: First Person On the Road from Antakya to Sivas July l993

That August in Antakya

"You must put that newspaper away!" The newspaper is Cumhuriyet, Turkey's most progressive daily. And the commentator is the beautiful young Turkish woman, sitting next to me. Our bus, cigarette-stinking, is dragging along the hot, cracked Anatolian road to Sivas. I beg her to explain the headlines--esoteric idioms for what appears to have been widespread wreckage. "Is it another earthquake? More terrorists? (Newspaper photos show bloody corpses, burned buildings, screeching faces.) I want to know!" "Put it down," she hisses between her teeth," I'll tell you what is. Later." I twist a sidelong glance at her striking profile; I have seen her ancestors in museums, studied them in art history courses -- richly painted Fayun mummy portraits from Coptic Egypt. I fix my eyes on this face from the past, carefully following the contours of her exquiste features. "Ahahhah, but you are foreigner," she turns to scrutinize my face, "This newspaper might not be good. (She pauses.) Or it might be good." I had watched her board the bus at a dusty little stop near Adana. Tears streaking her face, she had stood in the aisle and waved goodbye to a pudgy, fair-haired young man who shuffled awkwardly outside my window. To console her I had offered her a wedge of succulent Antakya orange. She had responded, (in Turkish) "Are you Turk? " I had blurted a shocked laugh--in response to what I had understood to be a compliment. "No! No!" she countered. "Your Turkish--your pronounciation--is very good. Are you French? German? English?" When I gave her my Canadian routine (terrorist bombs had just exploded in several Mediterranean resort towns, killing a number of tourists), she jabbered in disjoined English that her sister, an art teacher, lives in Toronto. Do I know her? When I told her that I am an artist, she addressed my fingers, "I know that--I see by your hands." She continued: that she had not spoken English in three years and would I please correct her grammar, pronounciation, vocabulary. At once I become her confidant. That was my boy friend," she offers, paranoia and anxiety twitching her ink eyes. "We are together four years, and all times we must sneak. It's too stressed." I smile at her unabashed confession and strain to understand what it is that has brought together such visual opposites: he, a doughy grey lump with an over-sized belly; she, a striking olive-colored goddess, with a direct line to the Romans who occupied Egypt. I don't ask, yet she offers; she is a third-year university mathmatics student and she met her boyfriend in Ankara. "I don't go to toilet for three days," she grimaces. "Every time we meet he tells me, you know, I never see you go to toilet. It's too stressed to see you, I tell him." She sighs aloud in the simple present. My head falls back against the seat and I laugh outloud, "Why don't you just get married?" I offer a laxative for her constipation, " . "Oh,no! " she gasps, "our parents don't know." "Well, then, tell your parents," "Oh, no! We don't. We can't." I wrench my face in miscomprehension, "He has a mother !" She wails and dramatically gestures her right forearm to her bowed forehead. I squint and feel a crooked smirk unfold across my face. "Hahhah," I see by your face that you know about such mothers." She folds her arms and stares at the murky cigarette smoke that engulfs the man sitting in front of her. "His father died last year," she speaks to the smoke, "and now, look! The mother will never leave him . He doesn't go from her, too." "Why don't you just shoot the mother?" I joke a final solution. This she finds rather humorous and I have the distinct feeling that she has already contemplated such an alternative. "Now," she sobs, "I don't even know even when I'll see him again. Or when I'll go to toilet." She turns to me, "So how is my English?" We both laugh out-loud. The smoking man in front of her reels in his seat and repremands our hilarity with an ugly glare. The Roman heiress leans into me and whispers, "We are telling our family different stories. Where we go. We are having three days together in Antakya. Here we don't know no one ("anyone," I correct her). Anyone doesn't know us. ("no one,"I correct her). Or our relatives. Or the mayor. Or the Jandarme. In Antakya is very freedom. (I haven't the energy to correct her anymore), and no one asks (good, good, I nod my head) if we are married. "Where did you stay?" I ask. "You won't tell anyone?" she whispers in my face, the smell the sweet oranges on her breath. "Who will I tell," I laugh at the absurdity of her question. I have stopped listening to her lunacy , contemplating her astute remarks about Antakya: concurring that this is the least oppressive, most progressive, Turkish place I've known. I turn to her, wanting to discuss this, but she's not listening. Rather, her eyes are focused inward, back someplace in her weekend-- savoring, re-living, her passion. 0ur bus slues to a stop. And an invasion of artillery and military infiltrate: yelling, gesturing machine guns. Ordering us to disembark. My larynx locks. No one protests. No one questions. The Coptic goddess straightens her spine, lifts her chin and eyebrows, squeezes my wrist tenderly and calms , "Be with me. I'll tell you all. After. Be quiet now! " She glares into my eyes, "You un-derstand?" Do I understand? She must be joking. Already my own bowels have begun autonomous peristalisis. I wonder whether this shock has proved equally laxative for her. Between my teeth I respond, " Tabii, of course, yes." It is stinking hot and dust dry on the bleached roadside, where other vehicles have been stopped, and other occupants are interrogated and searched. I have unspeakable fears and concentrate on tightening my terrified sphincters. Instinctively , the breathing exercises I learned twenty-five years ago in Lamaze classes take over. When my legs being to quiver uncontrollably (seven centimeters dialated), fast-panting sets to work. A Jandarme demands to know my destination, When I tell him,"Sivas," all eyes within earshot whip-round to me. My companion interrupts that I am a foreigner (no kidding, I am thinking). I cordially offer the name of my school, with hopes that it might impress the military--or the Jandarme. No dice. They want my passport, my teacher's card, and they want to know why I am going to Sivas. The Mummy Portrait seizes my arm and explains that I am an artist, "look at her hands," she lifts my blue fingers to the sky, "she goes to study the Selcuk monuments." While we wait in silence on the crumbling roadside our bus and baggage are rifled and ransacked. I yearn for a cigarertte ( I quit smoking six years ago), and panic: have I sufficiently hidden the Cumhurriyet among the pages of my sketchbook. It is a leftest publication, and in the enitre country, it is said, only 60,000 daily copies are sold. "Where are we going," I demand of my seatmate when the bus diverts the Sivas Road, turning onto the Ankara Road. "We are in Ankara tonight. Midnight. You will stay with my family this night. It is no problem. And I love it to practice my English." I shut my eyes and listen to the crackling of my vertebrete while I twist my aching neck from side to side. But the weight of her heavy stare compels my reaction, and I turn to confront her gaze, "Have you had cosmetic surgery?" she queries with suspicion, "Your profile is so perfect!" I laugh out-loud, again, at her unaffected, veracious overture. Exhausted and silly with laughter we sink back into our smelly seats: mute, drained--our eyes tracing the curls and clouds of cigarette smoke that engulf the repellent man ahead. The Romam Goddess speaks , "People who smoke are so selfish. Don't you think?"